by Gaelen Foley
Where do you get your ideas? If I had a nickel for every time I’ve
been asked this wrong-headed question. . . .
Ah, well.
When a non-writer asks me this question, basically, I just smile
and lie, because the truth is more complicated, less magical, indeed,
a good deal grubbier than most people who are just making conversation
really care to hear. If you tell them that it’s work—hard
work—they look at you like they suspect that you must be doing
it wrong.
There seems to be a myth floating around out there that story ideas
pop full-blown into our imaginations like Athena out of the head
of Zeus. Sheee-yah.
Good ideas aren’t found, they’re made. They take time
(for me, months) of effort, research, discussion/feedback, and certain
amount of good old-fashioned banging the head against the wall to
get something really solid and ‘fresh.’
The finished product should have a zing to it that gives me if
not outright goose-bumps, at least a shivery, electrifying excitement
that I just can’t wait to write the book. I need this kind
of impetus if I’m going to have to live with the story every
day for months on end.
A key skill you develop as you grow as a writer is the ability
to distinguish between good, better, and not-so-great story ideas.
Why are some ideas better than others? How can “okay”
story premises be built into really hot ideas? Let’s start
with the building blocks of a good idea.
Personal Involvement
If an idea or theme does not have resonance for you personally,
then forcing yourself to write about it is a waste of time. Everyone
has their personal hot buttons. Everyone gets excited by different
concepts and motifs. I’m no shrink, but there’s a reason
why authors tend to write book after book cogitating on the same
themes. What resonates for you is determined by the issues lurking
in your subconscious mind. The best way to get in touch with these
issues is to keep a journal or diary where you can examine the contents
of your own heart and head and the events in your life that have
caused you the most angst, pain, and (hopefully) growth. When people
say “write what you know,” this is what they mean—or
should mean. Write about the internal experiences that you know.
Genre Conventions
All genre fiction has certain conventions that must be met. Know
them and keep them in mind when designing your story premise. No
need to over-think this. It’s pretty obvious what they are.
Example: Heroes and heroines should be heroic, admirable, better
than average. (This is true for all genres, from sci-fi to thrillers
to Westerns. The heroic tradition in literature from Achilles and
Odysseus onward calls for protagonists who are superior in mind,
body, or both—but especially in their noble qualities.) Knowing
that heroic characters are needed will steer you away from story
premises that call for the protagonists to do unheroic things; or
if they must do something unheroic, you know that they must have
a heroic reason for doing it.
There are too many genre conventions to list here. The more you
read in your genre, the more you will become familiar with them.
Overused conventions are called CLICHES. If you are considering
something that you suspect may be a cliche, find some way to twist
it to make it, as the editors constantly say, ‘fresh.’
High Concept
High concept is a Hollywood term that refers to a premise that
may be somewhat far-fetched but has pizzazz—instant appeal—a
“crowd pleaser.” Not all stories need a high concept,
but an exciting story premise that can be encapsulated in a short,
powerful blurb is easier to sell to an editor, and easier for the
editor, in turn to sell to the sales and marketing department, and
easier for them, in turn, to sell to the public. High concept stories
also tend to be a lot of fun.
To me, Michael Creighton is a master of high concept. Ideas don’t
come much bigger than Jurassic Park. As we can learn from Creighton,
one way to create high concept is to combine in a new way two exciting,
known, or beloved ideas that people are interested in: Disneyworld
meets dinosaurs.
Dan Brown has also achieved a great high concept with The DaVinci
Code: The mysteries of DaVinci’s genius crossed with the mysteries
surrounding the life of Jesus.
Another example is one of my all-time favorite books, The Stand,
by Stephen King. (If you haven’t read this book, you don’t
know what you’re missing!) King crosses an end-of-the-world
plague or disaster story with a supernatural battle between good
and evil, and makes it all work with a cast of unforgettable, seemingly
everyday folks who must rise to the occasion to become heroes to
save the world! I love this book.
In romance, a story that stands out in my mind as a great high-concept
idea is Candice Proctor’s Night in Eden. Proctor unites the
captive/indentured-servant motif with the man-needs-woman-to-care-for-his-child
convention, and she wove the two together with powerful characters
and beautiful writing.
Finally, I might add that I launched my own career with a high-concept
story, The Pirate Prince. Lazar is a young royal prince of a Sicilian-style
Italian island kingdom whose family is assassinated and overthrown;
he escapes the killers by leaping into the sea, where he’s
fished out and enslaved by Barbary corsairs. Years later, he is
a pirate captain and returns to carry out his vendetta on the people
who killed his family. Naturally, the heroine is the daughter of
the puppet-governor that the real villains put in charge of the
island.
But even if you don’t really have a high concept for your
story, there are ways to build up your premise in scope and intensity
to give your novel added power well before you even start writing.
First, it takes brainstorming.
Brainstorming Techniques
I mentioned that it takes me months to come up with a new story
premise. It does. Normally, I write new material for my work-in-progress
six days a week, but not on Sundays. Instead, each Sunday, I spend
about two hours brainstorming ideas for my next book. Doing this
over a period of months gives the next idea plenty of time to mature.
It gives me plenty of time to consider it from many different angles,
and to check the necessary research materials to make sure it’s
feasible. Here are some pointers for effective brainstorming.
– You can brainstorm by yourself or with a small group. If
you choose the latter, make sure you pick people with whom you are
comfortable. It is crucial that you feel at ease enough with them
to throw out wacky-sounding ideas without feeling stupid. At this
juncture, you are NOT to judge your ideas or anyone else’s.
– It’s good to space out your brainstorming sessions
in time because your subconscious mind will be working on the problem
while your conscious mind is involved in other things. That’s
why I like to do it once a week. In between sessions, I don’t
think about it at all. Of course, if I do have a sudden inspiration,
I jot it down and stick it in my new folder that I prepare for each
new novel. Then I forget about it till Sunday. Forgetting about
it is actually a crucial part of the process!
– When it’s time to brainstorm, any and all ideas are
welcome, from the ordinary to radical and wildly impractical. Don’t
judge their value yet. Write them all down (brainstorming groups
can record it on audiotape, or online brainstorming chat groups
can run a chat log so none of the ideas will be missed). Don’t
dwell on one idea for too long; don’t get stuck or fixated
on only one possibility.
– If you stall out, you can get the ideas flowing again by
asking a pertinent question, especially a “What if?”
question. Here are just some examples: What if I reversed the hero
and heroine’s role in this set-up? What if the heroine isn’t
really what she appears to be? What if I took out this heroine and
instead substituted a totally different sort of woman? What is the
hardest thing one could ask this sort of hero to do? What would
really throw this character a curve ball? What’s the worst
possible thing that could happen in this situation? What’s
the best possible thing that could happen in this situation? What
if I radically change the setting? What if I radically change this
person’s social status, what then? etc.
– Another technique if you stall out is word association.
Throw out a couple of key words, build a list of words associated
with it (however obliquely), and see if that doesn’t generate
some new directions for you.
– An extra hint: If you are going to brainstorm/write historical
romances or another type of book that requires a specialized body
of knowledge, try to recruit at least one person with wide knowledge
in that field. Due to their particular expertise, they will see
possibilities that may never have crossed your mind.
Post Brainstorming Procedures
Once you’ve generated a long list of ideas of varying viability,
select the best, say, three to five ideas that deserve to be fleshed
out further.
Perhaps you brain-stormed two ideas that would be something extraordinary
and new if you combined them? You don’t want to end up with
a clunky Frankenstein of a premise, of course, patching too many
disparate parts together, but can a couple of these ideas be brought
together to create something greater than the sum of its parts?
Note that this is still not the time to become fixated on one particular
idea. The initial stages of research will also help to weed out
the do-able from the not-as-doable. Research into the relevant topics
will inevitably give you new angles and insights, so remember that
at this stage, the ideas are still being recast, molded, hammered,
kneaded, twisted, bent, embellished, trimmed, or what-have-you.
Further questions that you can bring to your fledgling premises
to strengthen them even more include: How can I make the hero and
heroine even more diametrically opposed? What is the hero’s
noble goal? What is the heroine’s noble goal? What will happen
if his goal is not achieved? Ditto for her goal? What’s at
stake here? What more could be at stake? Why does it matter? How
can I make it matter more? Why does it seem highly unlikely that
he/she will achieve their goal? Is this idea big enough to sustain
400 pages of story?
I don’t normally work with groups. Instead, when I’ve
narrowed my choices down to three viable and interesting ideas,
I write up a 100-word blurb and email it to my friends and ask them
which one grabs them, and if they see any immediate way to make
it better. I’m lucky if I get a consensus, LOL, but if I have
any further tweaks from my girls, I make the changes, then send
a similar email to my agent to see if she has an opinion about the
various choices. My agent always has an opinion. Usually one of
the ideas will be cut at that point, and finally, if I’m still
not totally committed (and feeling brave) I may send the last pair
of ideas left standing to my editor to gauge her level of interest/excitement
about either of them. After all, it only takes a moment of her time.
It’s not like I’m sending her some big, long thing that
will inconvenience her.
The risk here is that if everyone raves about idea A or B and you’re
in love with C, then you have to decide for yourself which one you’re
going to pick. Given the personal involvement issue discussed above,
C may be your best bet. On the other hand, if there’s some
reason why it’s particularly risky, remember that you can
always set aside a less-marketable idea that you love and commit
to writing it later, after you’re an established writer.
With all of this done, you will have finally, hopefully, wound
up with a solid, exciting, feasible story premise that you can write
up in a 100-word blurb. There, now wasn’t that fun, quick,
and easy? *grin* Now all you have to do is write the book. So, there
you have it. Now you know “where I get my ideas from.”
I work for ’em!
Happy writing! Till next time,
Gaelen
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